[P]ublic opinion about political processes doesn’t have big consequences. It didn’t matter much during the health care debate, for example. And there isn’t much evidence that it cost Obama a lot of support during the debt ceiling fight, even if the public found that fight to be “ridiculous,” “stupid,” or “disgusting.” [In general, the average voter views most political debate with a measure of disgust, Sides notes, preferring to think that the only thing preventing consensus is feckless politicians.]

But note the corollary: Obama allegedly wants to seek bipartisan solutions that allow him to be seen, particularly by independents, as “making Washington work.” This just doesn’t work. Not only because such solutions are hard to come by, but because the public cares more about fixing stuff than about how that stuff gets fixed. For this reason, a robust economy is a thousand times more helpful to Obama than are his bipartisan credentials.

On the other hand, Sides does say that the President’s concessions make him less vulnerable to attacks, in 2012, suggesting he doesn’t care about deficits. So has Sides identified an error in strategy, or are he and the President’s strategists saying the same thing, only framing it differently?